Mother’s ashes were given out in a bag from Rimi

The woman’s mother died at the end of February. Saying goodbye to the person closest to me, to put it mildly, did not go as planned. Inspired by a friend, she decided to talk about what she experienced.

When her mother died, the woman turned to a funeral company, which offered its intermediary services – organized the cremation of the deceased in the Riga crematorium, owned by another company (SIA “Rīgas kremācijas centrs – krematorija”), and sold the urn, and sold the urn into which the crematorium was supposed to place the ashes after cremation.

The farewell ceremony in the Riga crematorium went smoothly, the daughter of the deceased said. The relatives paid the crematorium about 600 euros for organizing the farewell ceremony and cremation of the deceased mother.

Later, the daughter and her friend returned to the Riga crematorium to receive her mother’s remains in an urn left at the crematorium, but the way the remains were returned shocked the grieving daughter. They were distributed not in a bin, but in a bag from the store, because there was no employee who knew how to open the bin.

“They gave me out in a paper bag “Rimi”, there was also a piece of paper with my first and last name. They said that it happened that way. In this bag there was also a smaller plastic bag with my mother’s ashes. The ballot box was given separately, empty. I felt uncomfortable looking at my mother’s ashes. We apologized that this happened. They said that there was not a single technical worker who could lay the ashes. They said that their ballot boxes are different. I felt like I was in a cold shower! Madness! The ashes are separate, I see all this in the Rimi package. It’s an uncomfortable feeling,” the woman says.

A shocked relative of the deceased believes her mother’s remains have been desecrated. Her friend shares a similar opinion: “Madness in general! How can you behave like this?! That’s how it was explained – then think about how to do it [захоронить прах]».

Having received the ashes in this way, the woman, in a state of shock, could not object and left the crematorium. The deceased’s daughter and confidant later thought about going to the Riga crematorium to explain themselves, but at that time they were saying goodbye to another deceased – out of respect for the deceased and his relatives, they did not make a fuss. Instead, the daughter contacted a funeral home, which sold the urn. The company representative was also unpleasantly surprised by the behavior of the Riga Crematorium employees and offered to take the urn with the ashes to the office of the funeral company to move the ashes into the urn. The deceased’s daughter agreed.

Along with the relatives of the deceased, journalists later arrived at the funeral company. A company representative, showing another similar urn, demonstrated that it was quite easy to open it by unscrewing a few screws. Therefore, the representative of the funeral company was surprised that the crematorium did not know how to open the urn to move the ashes into it. “If they were having difficulty, they could call. I would tell you how to do this, instead of returning the ashes in a bag,” said a representative of the funeral company.

The Riga crematorium apologized to the relatives, agreeing that the action was unethical.

“They [родственники] They brought an urn that did not meet our standards. When they returned, there was no operator directly involved in filling the bins at that moment, and this is not the responsibility of the employee distributing the bins. This is an ethical issue. Of course, we apologize to the relatives. Such a coincidence. Apparently, the people in charge were having lunch or free time when the man arrived. Perhaps those responsible were not around at that moment,” the crematorium indicated.

When asked whether it was impossible to assume that such a delivery would cause pain to the relatives of the deceased, or whether it was possible not to distribute the ashes in a bag, but to wait for the arrival of the responsible employee whose task was to open the urns, crematorium representative Ilze Verpakovska said that the relatives did not object. Journalists pointed out to the crematorium representative that the relative was in a state of shock when she saw the ashes in the bag, which explains the silence. The crematorium said they would draw conclusions.